New Harrow free school application moves forward

A proposed new free school aiming to tackle increasing demand for places will get help from a government scheme.

The group of parents and teachers hoping to set up a new school in Harrow has been accepted onto the New Schools Network Development Programme.

The programme, set up by the Department for Education, aims to help groups around the country in applying to set up their free school.

New School for Harrow was established in March 2014 this year and has also recently agreed to partner with the Broadfields Primary School, in Edgware.

Vicky Bewer, member of the New School for Harrow team says: “The whole team is delighted to have been offered a place on the New School Network Development Programme.

“This puts us in a brilliant position to submit a successful application for our school to the Department for Education in October this year and to turn our dream of a new school for Harrow into reality.

“It has taken a huge amount of work to get to this point but it has been really interesting to learn about the process.”

Robin Archibald, headteacher at Broadfields Primary School said: “I am delighted to be part of the New School for Harrow team.

“Broadfields shares a similar vision with New School for Harrow and I am excited to be able to share my experience and passion for excellent schooling with the group.”

The school plan was started by a group of parents who were concerned about the lack of school places in Harrow.

Ms Bewer said: “As group some of us have children of a similar age and we started to look to the future schooling.

“It wasn’t until then we realised the issue with school places in Harrow that we started talking about setting up a school and looked into how we would do it.

“So many people have really helped us and it’s been really important to us to be able to draw from other people’s experiences.

“We want this school to be a community school and we want the community to help shape it.”

The group is currently aiming to have its application for the free school into the Department of Education by October this year.

Between now and then the new proposed new school will be looking to parents in the community and register their interest sending their children.